


Beds, Grief, and Carriage Rides

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Romantic Angst, Romantic Fluff, Sharing a Bed, Thick as Thieves Spoilers, discussion of loss, married couple being cute, pg-13 level sexy times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 17:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16202312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: Sometime between KoA and TaT, Attolia grieves for what might have been. Gen tries to cheer her up, and fails miserably.There is only one bed.Can things get better for the couple?What started as me having fun with everyone's favorite trope, turns out to be a little more angst and hurt-comfort than expected. (Or maybe, given this fandom's source material, fully expected)





	Beds, Grief, and Carriage Rides

In the past few months, the room where the Attolian royals eat their breakfast has heard a great deal of disagreements. Not the sort one might expect from royalty; shouting about power and wealth and privilege. Rather, these arguments, to an outsider, would seem both petty and ridiculous. Which was exactly how at least half of the arguing couple wanted them to appear.

“Carriage.” The boy-king says, flipping a coin from hand to hand. He is draped over his chair, sideways, and offers his wife a smile as lazy as his posture.

“No.” his queen replies. As always, her posture was perfect, and her expression was… the opposite of lazy. Her makeup had been applied with a painter’s precise hand, her expression, of unsmiling lips and narrowed eyes, only amplified the result.

“Two carriages.”

She shakes her head, glittering earrings bouncing slightly with the movement. Not rubies. Not today.

“Three!”

Her hand goes to her face, delicately pinching the bridge of her nose. She’d prefer to rub her eyes, but that would smudge the kohl and set her back a good number of hours.

“You’re injured,” he starts.

It is the exact wrong thing to say. “I’m _fine.”_ The words comes out like a sword sliding from a scabbard.

The king’s eyes grow very wide, and his face turns young. Not too young to have a wife, but perhaps too young to have one who is so old. She knows she’s too old, too bitter, too much a harpy for him. It’s her fault. Her age and her coldness. That’s what’s to blame, for her tears last night and the night before, she reminds herself. Not his fault. But the words have already been said, and the pain already set into this expression.

“No, no. I mean. Ire-” he stops himself, just in time from using her name. “I meant, it was, a…”

“A mistake? An accident? Yes, I’ve heard both from the doctors.” She wishes it could be blamed on a doctor, on medicine, on anything except for the cruel capricious nature of life and death.

Now it is the king’s turn to close his eyes, and he, having none of the concerns she did for his appearance, rubs his face. She looks away, too afraid to see if there would be tears.

“I wasn’t referring to that. I was just joking. Remember? You stubbed your toe, yesterday, and I…”

She leans in, to whisper for his ears alone.“Some jokes land like shots fired, Eugenides. You of all people should know that.”

If it is possible for him to slump even lower in his chair, he does so.

The queen returns to her breakfast. The experts thought perhaps she needed to eat more fruits, to make the fruits of her womb blossom. She’d pointed out the goal was not for her to give birth to a garden, but today, she eats her bowl of fruit anyway. Dutifully, like she’s tried every other suggestion they’ve made.

The only part of this whole process she’s enjoyed has been the part she shares with her husband, an area that she certainly will not be inviting the expert to study. Her nights are hers and his alone. Even if that which they do at night is as important to the future of their kingdom as it is for the future of their own happiness.

Attolia needs an heir. In fact, Attolia the nation needs an heir more than Attolia herself needs to be happy. That’s what she tells herself, when the tears threaten, as she eats her fruit like a good patient.

Twice now, it had happened. The second, only two days ago, and the pain is still so raw. Had her husband truly forgotten with that slip of the tongue? Was the carriage really an offer of pity from him, rather than some silly topic to argue over, like the color of his robes?

Perhaps it was because he was a man. He didn’t know what it felt like to carry, and then to lose.

But she stopped that line of thinking with a single glance at his right arm. No. Her king knew a great deal about loss.

It was, she decided, that he was an optimist, and used to figuring out a way to win, no matter what. But there were somethings, like time that has passed and starlight and the growth of new life, that even the Thief could not steal for her.  
She speaks softly, “we will ride.”

He set his expression. “In a carriage.” His eyes flicked toward her, offering so many things, apologies and tenderness and yes, stubbornness, because he had, for whatever reason, decided they needed to take a damn carriage on this trip to a far-off lord’s estate.

“You have recently stubbed your toe, my queen, leaving you injured.”

What he was really saying flutters  beneath his words, like a tune played counterpoint. _This is the joke I wanted to tell you._ And, to prove his sincerity, to show he too suffered, he raised his right arm, and lay the hook on her thigh for a moment. “As am I.”

She ran one delicate finger over the metal curve, avoiding the honed side. “As are we,” she breathed out, “both.” It was his loss too, what had happened two days ago. She must force herself to remember that. But she’s suffered for so long alone, that it is a hard skill to learn, this sharing of pain.

So, she says, flippantly,  “Shockingly enough, one does not need both hands to ride a horse.”

“Oh really?”

And the queen, with that feeling that had become familarsince the moment she’d put those ruby earrings the first time, cursed whatever had possessed her to give him an idea.

 

The next day, the Annux got his carriage as well as a  very cross queen. From the other side of the closed carriage, she folds her arms and says “Telus informed me that you had quite the odd way of attempting to climb into the saddle this morning.”  
“Yes, you see, my queen tells me that I need no hands to ride, so I simply hopped from the mounting block. Oddly enough, without a hand to grasp the saddle, I fell.”

“Into the mud.”

“Quite.”

“Ruining the perfectly good outfit your attendants had made ready.”

“The grey outfit, my queen.”

“Silver.”

“More of a pewter, really, but the sort  of color of that metal that one might find in a bedpan;”

She closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of her husband, dressed in shades that any songbird might envy, across from her.  How strange it is to both miss him and wish to be away from him, all while he sits across from her.

An hour later, or perhaps an eternity, she speaks.“I enjoy riding.”

“Oh, I know you do.” he replies, and there was enough lavishness in his voice for her to blush, as red as her earrings.

She’s put the rubies in today. Little good they do her mood now.

Anything she said, any light swat she might have given him, no matter how deserving,  would only encourage him on that topic. In fact, just her blush is enough for him to add, “I find that my queen looks most beautiful when she is astride a truly handsome mount.”

Her cheeks burn darker than a ruby now, and she wonders if there have ever been carriage seats that might swallow one whole. If so, she deeply hopes these ones will do so, and soon. It's not the content of the joke, though she's glad no one else is there to hear it, but more... the matter at hand.

She's not sure she wants to try again. But she has to. They have to. They must keep trying, and trying, and perhaps someday... Someday. It is a far-off word, for a future that had seemed so close at hand only a week ago.

There is knitting to be done in the basket a well-meaning attendant has left at her feet. But there's no point in crafting a little blanket, when there is no one for it to keep warm.

A long silence, of only the lack of words, not the lack of sounds, passes. Wheels creek, straining as the great draft horses surge forward. Around them, the carriage walls shake and jostle with each bump in the road.

There are a lot of bumps.

“Were you really looking forward to the ride?” he asks, as if considering it for the very first time.

Her gaze is not on him, nor straight ahead. No, for once, it is out the narrow window of the carriage, watching the riders around them, each comfortably seated, reins in hand, in control of their own journey. 

She sits, and she stares out the window, half thinking of freedom, and half of spilled perfume.

“Yes,” she says softly.

 

Their midpoint stop is a lord’s home. The lord is both old and heirless, which means his land will be swallowed up when he passes. It also means that her choice to rest there cannot be seen as a threat or a favor, as he has little but hospitality to offer his queen.

It was an easy choice to select him, but it is all too uncomfortable a reminder of how important heirs are. And how rare.

At dinner, Eugenides tries very hard to be charming, which only results in her face tightening, as if the meal is only made of lemons and the wine, vinegar. Because she doesn’t need charm.

She needs a king.

But that is not an argument to be had in front of others, though the tension between them over the matter lingers. It  is there in all the pauses where she would usually smile at his jokes, in all her silence as the dinner progresses.

It is there too, when the music starts, and he does not ask her to dance. She doesn’t look at him then, because she might break. They'd danced together so often, up until two days ago, in the privacy of her rooms, and in her bed. Learned all sorts of twists and turns to make with limbs and lips. They had been so in harmony, so happy, while the music had been sweet.

The carriage ride gave her too much time to think, and, more over, time to mourn a life that she had only begun to imagine.

The queen is both tired of mourning, and quite new to it.

 

Dinner ends, and so does the night.

“Your majesty, if you will follow me,” the lord’s head servant leads her, and Eugenides, and their guard, down a long hallway. “My lord has offered his own room.”

“I hope he washed the sheets first,” Eugenides mutters, just low enough only his queen hears.

The servant pushes open the door. It is a well appointed room, with only three high windows, and finely carved furniture. Her careful eyes see no threats, no assassin lurking in the shadows. Instead, they land on something more terrifying.

“Is there a second room, attached to this one?” she asks, trying hard to sound conversational.

“Ah, no, your majesty.” The servant bows his head. “But if you wish for your retaining staff to be nearby by, we can move them from the servant’s wing.”

Next to her, Eugenides shifts his posture like a cat, gone from lazing at an window to spying a particularly fat robin, just out of reach.

It is not a good sign. Few, however, watch him closely enough to see the way opportunity makes his eyes dance with fire.

The one attendant she has brought coughs. “Their majesties do, uh, prefer, the older Attolian tradition.”

But this servant is young, and does not understand. “Is there something the matter with the room?”

Oh, damn it all. Now to refuse will be to make this a diplomatic offense.

Delicately, she speaks. “I do not wish to sleep in the same room as my king. His mind is troubled with matters of state.”

No. Just filled with nightmares of her.

“Ah. I… see.”

“It is better for us both to be alone. In our own beds.”

Because this room has only one bed. It looms in front of her, offering both comfort and fear. The fear of this careful rude they have sliding away. The fear of showing just how much she needs her husband.

No one says anything. Suddenly, the silence, which has been her only comfort all day, is too much. “Do I make myself clear?” she speaks, now, like the queen who ordered death. Not the almost-mother who had to hold death in her hands. “I do NOT wish to sleep with my husband.”

Everyone backs up.  
Even him. Shifting from stalking cat to kicked puppy, all too easily.

She strides forward, and shuts the door. Latches it tightly.

WIthout any attendant, she simply flings the pins out of her hair, not caring where they land, not caring even when the crown falls, and throws herself onto the bed.

It is plush and soft, and far too big for one lonely person.

Her sobs are as silent as the day has been.

 

The moonlight, streaming from the high windows, wakes her. She lifts her head to look. The moon, inconstant, changing, yes, but always there. Perhaps she should see if there is an old goddess of the moon. Someone who would understand how one can wax and wane, all in such a short time.

Does the moon miss its fullness, when it is a crescent? Or does it trust the time will come once more.

While she stares at the moon,  he drops down, from a high corner of the ceiling. So soft that anyone but her would not have heard it. “You,” she says softly.

“Me,” he agrees, but he does not come to bed. He stands there, and he hides his hook behind his back, the way he has not done in months.  
And when she reaches out, he trembles.

But he does not pull back, and she strokes his cheek, the one scar she feels she did not give him, of all of those on his body. She’s told him that before, and he’s cheerfully explained that the shackle marks weren’t from her, nor were a multitude of other small nicks and scrapes, but that does nothing to take the feeling from her.

All he does is make her feel, which, in many ways ways, is more than anything else in the world.

“I thought you might have meant it this time.” He whispers.

For a moment, he’s a boy and she is so, so aware of it. Of the youth he should have had to spend elsewhere, of the kisses from gentler people that he deserved, of the warmth and love and affection he’s been denied, all by her and her choices.

He makes her feel, and so, she makes him suffer.

Waiting there, waiting for his wife to invite him to bed. Suffering. He stands there, shifting his weight from soft-soled shoe to soft-soled shoe. It’s no surprise he’s brought what she considers his Thief gear, no surprise he found a way to her. And it’s not even a surprise that he doubted her love.

She could scold him. She could point out how the earrings still glittered in her ears while she sent him away. She could tease him, call him boy until he blushes.

But this time, she doesn’t. Her hand pulling him a little closer to her. They haven’t kissed for two nights. She’d been so angry, not at him, but at herself, at the stars in the sky. And, if she admits it, a little mad at him too, because she had not seen, before, that he grieved too. But his grief he hides with jokes and smiles, because he refuses to give her any indication he’s in pain. Refuses to burden her with any more than the heavy load she carries.

“I’d understand, if you did mean it,” he mumbles. “We don’t have to… you know. I could just… I could hold--” his voice breaks, and all that pain she’d thought he hadn’t been there erupts. Cuts across his face and into his words. “Hold you.”

Because the word hold brings up the memory of what happened the day before the loss. She’d walked in on him practicing cradling pillows laden with fruit, figuring out how to hold the most precious thing in the world with a weapon for his right hand.

“I want to keep her safe,” he’d whispered when he noticed her watching, her hand to her belly.

But in the end, neither of them could do anything at all to ensure safety for the one they waited for. Easier to plan against assassins, than simple facts of life and death.

 

Now, kneeling in that bed, too big for just her, she kisses him, soft, gentle, and so full of tenderness her  own heart aches. The heart he’d had to steal to remind her she had.

It takes him a moment to kiss back, but when he does, there is none of the boy in him. Just her husband, her king. Hers.

“You shouldn't be alone,” he whispered. “Not tonight.”

“I'm good at being alone,” she replies.

“Just because you're good at it, doesn't mean you should be.” His thumb brushes over the earring, and travels down her neck. Then, re-finding all his confidence, he kisses her like a drowning man fights to reach shore.

They fall backwards onto the bed, him always a little more careful than any other lover might be, with that bladed hook. Sometimes he doesn’t take it off, and she can see her reflection in the gleam of the metal, her eyes gone wide with passion, cheeks flushed with passion, mirrored by the object that came from her coldest moment.

Other times, she is the one to remove it, and kiss the skin beneath.

Tonight, the hook cuts through her gown, and it is he who kisses skin hidden, underneath all her layers of silken armor. Only his kisses can cut through the mental armor too, finding all that is tender underneath.

Her breathing melts into soft moans, little whispered prayers to gods that honestly are probably quite enjoying this spectacle, given how much work they put into making it.

She’s naked now, beneath him, spread out on the bed that’s meant for two. “Eugenides,” she whispers, both a prayer and his name, her fingers in his soft hair, tugging him up so she can kiss his lying lips.

“This is a much nicer bed than they gave me,” he muses, rolling over after the kiss, flopping back onto the mattress. “It feels… why it’s full of feathers! Mine is straw.”

“Fitting, for one as goat-like as you.”

He glares at her.

She raises an eyebrow.

“Well, feathers are suited for a harpy like yourself.” he says, putting one hand behind his head, looking up at the ceiling he’d dropped from.  There’s a small crack between that wall and the next. They’d both seen it, when the servant had brought them to the room. “We ought to get you a nest. You could curl up and…”

“Hatch my young?” she asks. It’s a tone that her advisors, and Gen, only know. Bitter. Not at the world, but herself.

“Irene. I…” He curses, pushing himself back up. The pain exists between them, though now, she realizes, she has carried all of it. Cradled it the way he sometimes cradles his right arm. Cradled, the way she still dreams of…

Like he dreams of opening and closing the hand she took from him. Is this the goddess’s doing then? To punish her, for taking so much?

But she’d taken what she’d found. It was the gods who led her to him, who… Her hand goes to her temple, because her thoughts have circled back around, swirling like poisoned wine down a drain.

His voice cuts through the twisting thoughts around her, as only his can. “Why do you keep me around, if I’m so good at breaking things?”

“You are not the only one who has broken things,” she reminds him. “Inkpot.”

His eyes flash in the darkness. “Goblet.”

“Dented.”

“Irreparably so.”

“Still useable.” In fact, she was rather fond of the dent, since the reason he'd flung it had been so adorable. He’d not know a woman’s mouth could do more than kiss his lips, the fool.

He replies, “mirror”

“Wait.” She paused. “I broke that.”

“Yes, we’re switching to things the other has broken.” He replies. Typical him. To change the battlefield to one better suited to his maneuvers.

“Fine then.” She waits a moment and then says, accentuating every syllable. “Glass. Windows.”

“My heart.”

“Oh come now, that's not even tangible!”

“Mm…” he nips her shoulder. “Come now? Is that an invitation?”

Her fingers twist in his hair and tug. “You broke my favorite chair.”

“You sit too much already. I did you a favor.” He nuzzles her neck. “What about that book of mine you spilled wine on?”

“You read too much. I did your eyes a favor. You, however, tore just tore a dress I quite liked.”

“Fine. What about the ceramic statue of my cousin’s great uncle? Hmm?”

“Oh? And My own great aunt’s pearl necklace?”

“It was glass! A fake. How was I to know?”

“Isn’t that your occupation? To be aware of the quality of the things you steal?”

But they’re both smiling now, and his fingers brush down her neck, her shoulder, slide lower.  Searching, so skillfully, for all that will give her pleasure. Then, they press, in that little dance he’s perfected, each fingertip like lightening to her skin. “Oh I am … very, very aware of such things’ quality.”  
“Mm. Perhaps you should inspect such things more closely.”

He smiles, and shifts his body down, kissing her hips, her navel, and then lower, until her fists are clenched in the pillows. Yes, he is impulsive and stubborn and so good at breaking things… but he is even better at putting them back to right. She gazes down at him, resting one hand in the tangle of his dark hair, and for the first time in two days, smiles.

 

He lifts his head to smile back at her. They don’t need to speak. Not now. He’ll steal this pain from her heart, replace it with all the pleasures he can give, and in the morning, they will both be better. They will be together.

Together, as they had been in the carriage. Only now does she see what he did. Beyond his equestrian dislike, of course, there was a second reason.  
With him, there is always a second reason, if not also a third, fourth, fifth, and so on.

Tonight, as with most nights, he counts her pleasure the same way. Not once, not twice, but more than she truly deserves, until he rests, his head on her thigh, his hand moving to relieve himself of the burden he earns from such generosity. He doesn’t ask for her assistance, and he’s done before she even can think to move. While he pulls himself back from his blissful half-nap enough to undo his hook, she reconsiders what the carriage ride might have been.

How he could have held her and whispered to her, and kissed away each tear. Undone the knitting together, rewound the yarn and tucked away safe, for another time, another try.

Because he had been right that morning. She was injured. Not fragile in body, as she’d thought he meant, but fragile in spirit. The sort of wound only he, and not the doctors, knew how to heal for her.

She turns then, and pulls him to her, as soon as he sets down the hook. Kisses him deeply. The sort of kiss that tells him exactly what she’d like from him.

“So soon?” he whispers.

“If you can,” she teases, and her voice is light for the first time in days. “I believe it is certainly possible though.” Her hand snakes between them, touching him lightly, coaxing him. “The benefits of a younger husband.”

“Not that young,” he mutters. The tips of his ears are red.

No. Not that young at all. Old enough to be a father, to a child that still may yet be.

Only after, when they’re tangled in the silk sheets, both skin and hearts bared once more to each other, does he whisper. “Perfume amphora.”

“Oh, just shut up and kiss me, Gen.”


End file.
